Love’s Labors

A letter in response to Alex Ross’s article (November 12, 2012)

I was born on an upstate-New York dairy farm, in 1951, and was surely one of those kids who thought that “he was the only one,” as Alex Ross writes in his article on the history of gay culture and rights in America (“Love on the March,” November 12th). In the spring of 1977, at the age of twenty-six, I came out—at least to some of my fellow Harvard Divinity School students, who lived in my dormitory. A big reason that I went to seminary was to work things out with God on this matter, and I felt I could not move forward with my education until I had. After learning that being alive in faith required radical honesty with myself and with the Divine, I was compelled to come out of the closet. The ensuing decades have not been easy, but having watched as churches rapidly change—especially with regard to their views on homosexuality—I feel privileged to have played a role in that change. It is good to take stock of the movement that has progressed so quickly through the United States, and I am grateful to Ross for telling this uplifting story.

The Reverend C. Irving Cummings

Putnam Station, N.Y.

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